It is easy to blame big business for a change we don’t like. So Rosemary Stanton’s attempt in Crikey to blame the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) for proposed changes to the emissions trading scheme is understandable. But wrong. Instead, the real push to exempt agriculture comes from farmers and Coalition voters in rural seats.
Agriculture and basic food processing are exempt from the European and proposed US ETS schemes. Yet the current Australian CPRS includes a provision to leave agriculture out for three years, with a view to including it after that period. If Australian agriculture is included then the Farm Institute estimates the total elimination of profitability for the livestock industry.
But — in an era when food companies are suddenly now seen as enemies of the public good — blaming the AFGC makes for a better story. The proposed Coalition amendments seek to include primary food processing as a trade-exposed industry, and therefore able to access assistance. Primary food processing is abattoirs and milk processors, it is not the manufacture of breakfast cereal, soft drink or other packaged groceries made by the members of the AFCG.
Stanton says it is absurd to omit food from the ETS because the processing, packaging, transport and storage of processed food creates greenhouse gasses. Well none of these activities will be exempt, they will pay the carbon tax like everything else and food prices will rise because of it.
But the attack on the carbon footprint of grocery manufacturers is only a hook to get to Stanton’s real agenda, demonising the food industry for causing obesity.
Apparently, all this choice is making us fat. The impressive statistic of obesity costing society $58.2 billion is often seen. That figure came from a study paid for by a diet drug company and commissioned by an organisation that receives grant money and donations based on government and donors’ perception of a massive problem. Grocery and soft drink companies are not the only ones with a financial stake in this.
According to Stanton, “The more on offer, the more we buy, the more we waist and the more we waste.” But Stanton and most higher-income women are not overweight. Most Australians are not obese and less than 10% have a BMI over 35, the level the most authoritative studies conclude is where serious health risks increase appreciably. Most Australians manage to refrain from obesity despite the choice on offer and the supposed pernicious efforts of the food manufacturers.
The real agenda is higher taxes for processed foods. But there is no evidence that taxing “bad” foods, those high in fat, sugar and salt, does anything other than raise revenue. The GST already taxes processed food and not fresh food, yet the growth in processed food consumption has continued unabated. Stanton callously dismisses the effects of a highly regressive tax on the poor without any evidence her approach would do anything other cause greater financial (and nutritional) hardship.
Morbid obesity is a serious health problem that needs targeted resources from the health system to combat. All the society-wide scatter-gun approaches, such a labelling, taxes, bans and cajoling do not address the serious, and usually multiple, health problems of the extremely fat.
Louise Staley is director, food & environment unit, at the Institute of Public Affairs and a farmer in western Victoria.
Well it is interesting that raw produce was included in the GST but the value-add of manufactured food was excluded. The GST price hike took place upstream of the food manufacturing industry and made it more competitive against simple ingredients on the supermarket shelves.
The result? Simple healthy food products have been supplanted on supermarket shelves by manufactured concoctions in which the actual primary produce ingredients are diluted with imported oils, emulsifiers and other ingredients known only by their chemical names or three-digit food schedule numbers.
The Australian Food and Grocery Council has shown no particular interest in promoting the superior produce of Australian farms. Deteriorating quality of ingredients is masked by sugar, salts and other flavour additives.
They have fought tooth and nail every attempt to improve labelling transparency. They have fought equally gallantly in defence of advertising junk food to children. Member companies mislead the public’s understanding of what a health food is, so that a few cheap vitamins added to junk food are supposed to be good for children, and most people I speak with actually think that an “energy drink” is a sort of vitamin supplement. The AFGC has not started one health campaign on their own that wasn’t for damage control following adverse media reporting.
To align themselves with the Australian farming sector is parasitic. Farming should have a big part to play in Australia’s future, including terrestrial sequestration of carbon and averting the looming global food crisis. But the food manufacturing companies that make up the AFGC have done the farmers no favours and have failed their duty of care to the public.
Correction, I’m wrong above about raw produce being subject to GST. The ATO website explains:
“The following foods are taxable:
– bakery products such as cakes, pastries, pies, sausage rolls (but not including bread and bread rolls)
– biscuits, crispbreads, crackers, cookies, pretzels, cones and wafers
– savoury snacks, confectionery, ice-cream and similar products (see Savoury snacks)
– carbonated and flavoured beverages (including flavoured milk, flavoured water and sports drinks) unless 100% fruit or vegetable juice
– all food and beverages sold in restaurants or for consumption on the premises (see Premises)
– hot food (takeaway)
– food marketed as prepared meals and some prepared food, including platters (see Platters and other similar arrangements of food)
– any food not for human consumption
– pet food or any food labelled or specified for animals”
And …
“The way the following products are marketed determines their GST status:
fats and oils marketed for culinary purposes (GST-free)
food marketed as a prepared meal, but not soup (taxable)
food marketed as confectionery (taxable)
food marketed exclusively as ingredients for confectionery (taxable)
flavoured iceblocks, whether frozen or not (taxable)
malt extract marketed mainly for drinking (GST-free)
preparations that are marketed mainly as tea, coffee, or malted beverages (GST-free)
preparations marketed mainly as substitutes for tea, coffee or malted beverages (GST-free)
dry preparations marketed to flavour milk (GST-free)
beverages and ingredients for beverages marketed mainly as food for infants or invalids (GST-free).”
No wonder I was confused. Anyway, my points about the conduct of the manufactured food industry, and its relationship to primary production, still stand.
The IPA again suggests taxes and regulations are bad. You forgot that global warming is not happening. The IPA is a PR company for sectors of big business but presumably not the diet industry. Tip to the diet industry; donate enough money then the IPA will form a healthy diet unit.
I was just reading Paddy Manning’s G-Biz column in the Age and discovered a new word, agnotology.
“Agnotology, formerly agnatology, is a neologism for the study of culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. ” from Wikipedia.
So now there is a name for the industry the IPA is in, the Agnotology Industry.
Screw the primary food processing industry and their disgusting animal abuse in the name of a few extra cents.